Bob Cook

When Allen Iverson heard that not only would he not be on the 2008 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team, but that he also didn’t even make the tryout roster — I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about the tryout roster, not the team, not the team, not the team, but we're talking about the tryout roster — he must have thought: I can't win.

Surely, Iverson for many years had cultivated a reputation as everything wrong with the NBA, all wrapped up in a neat little package in his infamous 2002 postseason rant about the relative unimportance of practice.

But that wasn’t the Iverson in the 2004 Olympics, and not the Iverson since then, either.

In Athens, Iverson was patriotic, selfless and even showed up for practice (well, one time he was late, but he showed up). Unlike just about every other established NBA superstar except Tim Duncan, he bothered to show. And that was to play under Larry Brown, the coach whose insistence Iverson show up for practice inspired his diatribe after Philadelphia, NBA Eastern Conference champs the year before, got bounced out of the first round of the 2002 playoffs. Iverson even said a lot of nice things about Brown.

About a minute after USA Basketball appointed former Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo its whole selection committee for the 2006 World Championships and the 2008 Olympics, Iverson let it be known that he was willing to make the three-year commitment to the national team.

Colangelo, who let it be known in August, upon taking the job, that character issues would be a factor in team selection, crowed to USA Today in January about what he saw as the "new Allen Iverson."

And when the names on the 22-player tryout roster — we’re talking about the tryouts, man! — leak out, there’s Kobe Bryant. There’s LeBron James.

There’s Shaquille O’Neal getting a standing invitation to show up if he pleases. There’s Luke Ridnour. Luke Ridnour?

“I just wasn’t picked. I’m not bitter. I’m not mad,” Iverson said after lightning it up for 40 points in a win over the Rockets on Wednesday. “It just means I’ll get to spend more time with my wife and kids over the next three summers. I still hope they bring back the gold. I’m just honored to have played before.”

Colangelo is supposed to tell the world Sunday, when USA Basketball announces the tryout roster — I know it’s important, I honestly do, but we’re talking about the tryout roster — why Iverson was left off in favor of, say, Shane Battier.

Colangelo likely will talk a lot about having a team, a true team with role players such as Bruce Bowen and Josh Howard, rather than a collection of superstars, to compete against team-oriented squads that have overtaken the U.S., such as Argentina. He’ll probably talk about the need to adapt to the international game and its trapezoidal lane, a game in which consistent outside shooting — even from big men such as the U.S. team’s only true center, Brad Miller — and crisp ball movement is essential.

He’ll most definitely mention about how those traits were not in evidence during the United States' sixth-place World Championship finish in 2002, and during the bronze-medal run in 2004. (Those losses are why USA Basketball abandoned selection by committee and turned the reins over to Colangelo.)

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He surely will make at least a passing or backhanded reference to past U.S. teams’, ahem, perceived unbecoming conduct as players, more concerned with their shoe deals and images than in performing well for their country. Bode Miller might even be held up as a cautionary tale.

Then we’ll await the explanation — why not Iverson?

What Colangelo won’t say outright, but what will be implied during the course of the announcement as he and U.S. team coach Mike Krzyzewski speak, is that Iverson, even the "new Allen Iverson," is still a symbol of ugly American U.S. basketball, both in how he plays, and how he conducts himself.

And that won’t be right.

Certainly, there’s a basketball case to be made for loading the team with consistent outside shooters such as Shawn Marion, Gilbert Arenas and Michael Redd, rather than Iverson. He led the 2004 team with 13.8 points per game, but shot only 38 percent. Isolation plays and driving the lane — two of Iverson’s fortes — don’t seem to translate well from NBA to international.

But Iverson right now is playing as well as he ever has. In fact, his shooting percentage this season (45 percent) is his highest since he shot 46% in 1998, his second year with the Sixers. Heading into Saturday's action, Iverson was second in the NBA in scoring, a career-high 33.0 points per game, only behind Bryant’s 34.9. But he’s passing the ball better than ever, too.

After averaging about 5 assists per game most of his career, Iverson’s averages the last three seasons have jumped to 6.8, 7.9 and this season’s 7.3.

Given that Iverson is more than willing to play the good soldier, there should be some way to mesh his talent with the likes of Joe Johnson and Dwight Howard.